Majority of all the current Lok Sabha MPs have an attendance of more than 80 per cent in the parliament. In fact, four of them, BJP’s Bhagirath Chaudhary, Jagdambika Pal and Mohan Mandavi, and Indian Union Muslim League’s M P Abdussamad Samadani have not missed even a single parliament session. While Chaudhary, Pal and Mandavi were elected in May 2019, Samadani was a latecomer, being elected only in July 2021 in a by-election. 

“People chose me in an election and sent me to the parliament. Do I have an option other than to attend it?” asks Choudhary, adding that he was lucky to not have fallen ill when the parliament was in session. 

Analysis of data

Analysis of the data on MP attendance put together by PRS Legislative Research shows that 271 of the Lok Sabha members, who were never ministers in their current tenure, had an attendance of more than 80 per cent. In fact, 94 per cent of the MPs had more than 50 per cent attendance. The attendance range of 16 MPs, however, was less than 35 per cent. The data is from May 2019 to August 8, 2022. 

The Lok Sabha MP with the worst attendance is Bahujan Samaj Party’s candidate from Ghosi, UP, Atul Kumar Singh. Data shows that he only has 1 per cent attendance. The others with attendance lesser than 20 per cent are All India Trinamool Congress’ Adhikari Deepak, Abhishek Banerjee and Nusrat Jahan Ruhi. While analysing the data, we have however not looked at MPs who were ever ministers during their current tenure. Ministers are not mandated to sign the parliament’s attendance register. 

When it comes to the upper house of the parliament, 30 of the current members have 100 per cent attendance. This is also because not all Rajya Sabha MPs are elected at the same time and a third of them retire after every second year. While 28 of these 30 MPs were elected this year, BJP MPs Sumer Singh Solanki and Rambhai Mokariya were elected in 2020 and 2021 respectively. 

While 64 per cent of the Rajya Sabha MPs have an attendance of more than 80 per cent, 93 per cent of them have more than 50 per cent attendance. However, there are exceptions everywhere. Case in point, seven Rajya Sabha MPs had less than 35 per cent attendance. 

Of them, the worst performer is AITC’s Subrata Bakshi who has a mere 10.89 per cent attendance. He was elected on April 3, 2020. He is followed by filmmaker V Vijayendra Prasad, who was nominated on July 7, 2022. His attendance is 18.75 per cent. He is followed by former CJI Ranjan Gogoi, who was called out by the opposition for his low attendance. PRS data says that he only has an attendance of 24.03 per cent. 

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